Joined: Aug 02, 2006
Posts: 337
Location: McLean, VA, USA
Posted:
Sat Dec 30, 2006 10:01 pm
The major thing to master to be able to drive a stick shift car is how to start it moving. Thing that does not take a bit of your effort on automatic car, here requires some skill. ALL people who start driving manual cars have difficulties learning how to start a car. It is doable, however, and I'm pretty much sure that everybody can learn how to drive a stick shift car with just an average level of determination.
It does not take the whole travel of your clutch pedal to engage/disengage your clutch. The engagement process itself usually occupies less than a third of its travel. All the rest is just a kind of a cushion zone. So, the first thing you do – you divide the whole travel of your clutch pedal into three zones. First being “still fully disengaged”, last being “already fully engaged”, and the middle one being just that - “engaging”.
Why would you want this? Because what really matters for how smooth you are able to start your car is how you operate clutch and gas pedals when you are in “engaging” zone.
Your next task is to get a feel for where engaging zone begins. You can find it really easy – when you slowly release your clutch pedal, you reach the point were engine sound starts to change a bit and, if you have tachometer, you see a slight drop in engine rpms.
Well, telling where engaging zone ends is not that easy. You can’t really do this when you are just starting to learn, but don’t worry, this will definitely come just a bit later.
So, now we are ready to start. After all this preliminary explanation the actual process of starting sounds really simple:
- depress the clutch pedal
- shift into 1st
- quickly release clutch pedal to the beginning of engaging zone
- while in engaging zone, simultaneously release clutch pedal and depress gas pedal, trying to keep engine rpms slightly higher than idle
- as soon as you reach the end of engaging zone, drop release the clutch pedal – you don’t need to smooth it anymore
- operate gas pedal to accelerate.
That’s it! You are up and running!
Last edited by Misha on Sun Jun 10, 2007 9:58 pm; edited 4 times in total
if you're first learning to drive a stick, find someone who has NOT been driving one their entire life. They will not give you useful information. find someone to drive you to a large empty parking lot and then shut up and let you drive
Also, remember, while you're teaching your legs what to do, give it a bit of extra gas and let out slowly. This is where that person who's driven stick their entire life will start getting annoyed with you for not doing it perfectly. The point is though, you won't do it perfectly at first and its better to burn the clutch a bit than to keep bucking and stalling the car.
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